This is where knowing how to plot and keep the tension and pace up comes into play and Matsuri doesn’t really do it justice. Then again some of the revelations in this are so unpalatable that I’m not even sure I’ll read the last volume that I got out of the library.

Yuki is suddenly and inexplicably hallucinating the more she tries to remember. Kaname steps in and unseals her memory revealing that she is in fact his younger sister and his betrothed because that’s how pure bloods do it ‘just like animals.’ Um no, Matsuri, they don’t. In fact, they drive the males out so they don’t normally. But it explains SO MUCH about Yuki. Her parents were brother and sister. She’s a complete idiot because she’s so inbred. That makes perfect sense. You would think creatures as long lived as vampires would have learned that inbreeding is never the answer, not even to keep in power. That, almost more than anything else, made both Egypt and Rome fall. I wonder also how many of the moms reviewing this on Amazon for their underaged daughters have any idea… This pretty much kills any of the romance in the story.

The rest of the volume deals with Kaname’s past and present as they intertwine in some Machiavellian resurrection plot for one of the purebloods in his line. It draws in Zero and his twin and has done for years. The problem is while gorgeous, Matsuri’s art isn’t distinctive. I can’t tell Kaname Kuran from the bad Kurans from Kaname's dad (don’t believe me look in the character notes at the end) and the story telling is so muddy that half the time you can’t follow the plot because you can’t even tell who has been drawn. I think I might be over thinking this thing.